


the taste of sweetness

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: AND THEYRE DATING, Angst, Blanket Permission, F/F, and this is the Dean's way of torturing Carmilla, obviously, possessed!Laura vs vampire!Carmilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12734418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: The thing about true traps is that they didn’t offer alternatives. So Carmilla stood, panther-graceful, the dark easy to pick through with the blood of at least half a human being ripping through her system. “I’m ready for it,” she promised the darkness. It seethed and rippled, coalescing near the door like a heaving sea. “Whatever you’re coming at me with? It can’t be worse than what I’ve seen before.”Laughter slipped from that morass, silvery and alien. “Really?” Laura's voice said. "For anything? For me?"





	the taste of sweetness

**Author's Note:**

> This story does have some violence and blood, given that it's got vampire Carmilla vs possessed Laura!

Carmilla hadn’t liked the look of the man who had come to deliver her dinner. She could smell the deceit on him, the salt and sour of decades of lies clinging thick on his skin. Whatever had gone wrong with Laura, whatever they were doing to her... it tasted sweet to that man’s tongue. 

At least they’d fed her actual _food_. She’d been worried for a moment that it would be another of Mother’s games, to hand her human nourishment and leave her weak, but there appeared to be another game afoot. 

The blood was bagged in Silas’s signature durable plastic sheath. They didn’t do much for appearances of actual medical expertise, but they were a practical way to store and transport large quantities of blood. It was like a larger, more macabre version of those honey sticks Carmilla had seen Laura getting into once. In the dark, in the night, cold and afraid, it tasted just as sweet. 

Carmilla frowned at the plastic, but licked it clean. It was odd, that they were feeding her so well. This was enough blood to fuel a medium sized rampage. Were they _trying_  to let her out of here? 

Knowing Mother, she’d have some dastardly plan to punish Carmilla for working against her. She’d expected a coffin, but maybe that was too kind. Torture lingered in the wait and in the unexpected. This wasn’t just a simple transgression — it had gone on too long and too violent for that. Carmilla hadn’t saved a girl — she’d saved her because she’d fallen in love, and then run away with her. She hadn’t even left Mother the option of unveiling her a monster because the girl had unmasked her herself. 

No. This would be a correction, swift and emotionless. Mother had always been good at that. 

 

 

* * *

 

It was cold in the cell. And dark. Laura had thought she’d known darkness, but this wasn’t the kind you’d find on kind moonless nights. It picked at Laura, a taloned comb in her hair, a sentient cold clawing at her spine. It didn’t linger or fall but clung, draping everything in the unknowable. 

There was nothing in the cell with her. Not light. Not straw for a bed. Her dishes had dissolved, leaving nothing but dust in the cracks in the concrete. It was a shame, really. Laura had had big plans for that knife. 

Emptiness settled in her stomach. The hot meal lingered, but there was Something in her that was hungry. And it would wait. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

An hour after her meal, the door to Carmilla’s cell swung open. There was no dramatic bolt clanging back with an echoing clang, and the hinges were well-greased. Silent. Mother was smarter than most gave her credit for, and less a fan of dramatics than practicality. It was an electronic lock, released via remote. 

She must be letting something in. Carmilla hardly thought that Mother was letting her _out_.

 _Trap_ , a voice in her whispered. Louder, she could hear a ghost of Laura’s words, laughing at a movie. _It’s a trap!_

The thing about true traps is that they didn’t offer alternatives. So Carmilla stood, panther-graceful, the dark easy to pick through with the blood of at least half a human being ripping through her system. “I’m ready for it,” she promised the darkness. It seethed and rippled, coalescing near the door like a heaving sea. “Whatever you’re coming at me with? It can’t be worse than what I’ve seen before.”

She’d really meant that. But the universe had a way of always, always dealing her worse hands. 

Laughter slipped from that morass, silvery and alien. “Really?” the voice said. Carmilla’s dead heart cowered in her chest and she fell back a step, the stone unyielding at her back. “Really? For anything?” More laughter. “For me?”

“Laura.”

Laura stepped from the blackness of the doorway, the frame hanging like a hollow in the universe behind her. Everything of the girl Carmilla had grown to love was gone from her bearing. It was worse, somehow, than when Mother had possessed her back in the days they still huddled on campus. At least then, Carmilla had known who it was. What she wanted. 

That eventually, she would leave. This _thing_  was an unknown, cloaked in Laura’s form, a softness and familiarity it didn’t deserve but seemed to relish. 

“You should have known better than this, little bloodsucker.” The R twisted and turned, curled in an accent that was long gone or had never existed on this earth. “Pushed a little too far, I’m thinking?”

“Stop.” Carmilla heard her own plea before she thought it. She couldn't tell if she was breathing or screaming or frozen. A pit shrieked in her chest, the sweet blood from earlier thick iron in the back of Carmilla’s throat. “Don’t- I. Don’t.”

Laura’s head tilted, her golden hair falling over her shoulder. Some of it was missing, torn away long enough ago that the dark blood had caked. “Can I get a please?”

It was useless and she knew it, but Carmilla said it anyway, her back to the wall the only thing keeping her weak knees straight. “ _Please_.”

The darkness looked at her through Laura’s eyes, seeing what it would in her brokenness. It smiled. “No.”

And then Laura moved. Carmilla let the first blow land, resigned to the pain if that meant she was going to get out of this safe. It sent her sprawling, palms skinned against the rough concrete. 

That would have been fine — that would have been the _price_  — but then Carmilla looked up to see one of Laura’s fingers bent at an unnatural angle, clearly knocked out of its socket or worse. 

Not even this. She couldn’t even take a beating without hurting the _only_  girl that had ever known her and loved her for it. 

“One of us dies,” Laura said, casual as a summer’s day. Nothing of her cast a shadow, though Carmilla’s lay curled with her on the floor in the magic not-light. “And it won’t be you. So I suppose you know what that means.”

The kick sent Carmilla rolling, the wall knocking the air out of her. This time, she sprang to her feet and _swirled_  into a panther, leaping for Laura with sheathed claws. They went down in a pile, the thing in her letting her fall without grace to the ground, head cracking against the ground. 

Carmilla growled, her panther-jagged teeth at Laura’s throat. It should have been surrender. If Laura moved, she’d cut herself on the supernatural edge of Carmilla’s teeth. 

Laura-darkness laughed, light and sweet. Carmilla could taste the old fear in her sweat, all that was left of Laura in this. “Oh, don’t expect me to think you’d rip the throat from your pretty little girl.” She jolted forwards, and Carmilla had no choice but to shift, hands scrabbling to hold what paws once pinned. “That’s better, isn’t it?” 

“Stop this.” Carmilla shoved Laura back closer to the doorway, the darkness faltering. In the faint light, the dark-girl winced. “I know you can. I know you aren’t chained to Mother’s bidding. You can choose to _end_  it.”

Laura’s big, brown eyes blinked. This close, Carmilla could see salt from tears coating her eyelashes. “Oh, I’m not bound. Not like you, little bloodsucker.” She turned her head, catching Carmilla’s lips where they lingered near Laura’s pulse, high and thready. She kissed Carmilla like Laura never had, pursuing her own needs over anything she wanted to say. “I _want_  this.”

Carmilla yanked back, but not fast enough. Laura caught Carmila’s lip in her teeth and bit down, scraping blood free. Her teeth stained red, the dark-girl grinned at Carmilla, then threw her. She had been playing, when she lay there, suffocating Laura under Carmilla’s weight. 

“If you’re not in the mood to play, I can start with _my_ turn.”

Laura scraped an arrow from the darkness and advanced on Carmilla. Mindless of her injured hand, she bent over Carmilla, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and jammed the arrow into her shoulder. 

On instinct, Carmilla shoved her back. Wood was to vampires what silver was to werewolves, if correctly applied. And this darkness-smudged Laura, wherever it was from, was more than familiar with that. 

Laura stumbled back, catching herself against the reality-hole in the doorway. “Good,” she praised. She rolled out her neck, cracked the knuckles still in place. “Are you ready to start then? We have a pretty little thing to kill, between the two of us.”

So Carmilla did the only thing left to her. The blood had been a mistake on their part, after all. They’d wanted her powerful enough to hurt Laura, but maybe this time, she could be bright enough to hurt herself. The panther was only one thing that blood lent Carmilla. Fire wasn’t safe for vampires, either, but to choose between Laura and herself?

She’d made that choice before. 

The arrow burned. 

 

 

* * *

 

As naps went, this one sucked. 

Laura groaned, her body refusing to move. It felt battered and sore, more so than it had hours before when the Dean’s people found them. She wasn’t quite sure _how,_ honestly. They’d been careful!

Other than the tweeting. In retrospect, it was probably the tweeting. 

Next filtered in the smell of burning, close along with the sensation of _light_. The darkness that had preyed on her earlier had cleared. Laura cracked her eyes open. 

Something in the room was burning. Smoke inhalation was something her father had taught extensively about — specifically, to  _avoid_ it. Most guides advised fleeing the smoke, but given how unsteady Laura’s legs felt even as she lay on the floor, she figured putting out the fire would be a better idea. 

So she sat up. Her hand sent up agonized messages at the movement, but that was nothing to her heart. 

The thing burning was _Carmilla_. 

Fast as she could, Laura scrambled over, and lacking other fire-out methods, threw herself over Carmilla. Thankfully, it hadn’t caught far, seeming to have fuelled itself more on something else than on Carmilla’s skin and clothes. Whatever had been impaled in Carmilla’s chest had burned away with the severe heat of the fire, but ash peppered a line down her shirt. A long stick of something. Laura didn’t want to think any more about that, or the fact there were tiny splinters embedded in her palm. 

When she was sure there was going to be no more barbecued girlfriend, Laura hauled herself to sit beside Carmilla. A blood bag lay discarded a metre away, clean and clear. So she was fed, at least? 

Anger caught in her chest, a burn hotter than whatever Carmilla had created. “What right does she have? She doesn’t _own you!_ ” Laura slammed her uninjured hand against the floor, stabbing herself with another splinter. Her voice caught, strangled almost before it could escape. “I should have taken you up on Paris.”

Laura cradled her hands in her lap, the broken finger, the blood smeared across her palm. Beside her, Carmilla lay still as the dead. And there was no way to tell. No way to know if the blood she’d consumed before was going to be enough. If she would ever wake up. If she was gone already or just on the way there. 

Laura wouldn't be able to get out of this place without her, even if there was a way out. Not only that, but what kind of person would she be if she left Carmilla to this place, to the mercy of her _Maman._

Laura studied her bloody palm again. There was only one explanation for how she’d gotten down here, splinters from a stake or similar in her hand, a Carmilla burnt, and the memory of darkness lying chilled against her skin. She was a relative newbie when it came to all this fighting-against-the-evil business, but she knew the signs of a possession when she saw one. 

Maybe that’s what it had been like for Perry too. To disappear into darkness and to awaken with blood on your hands?

Laura didn’t like feeling helpless, but here, she drowned in it. 

Sink or swim. Easy.

Laura sawed a gouge in the side of her hand against Carmilla’s teeth, sharp as razors. Blood dripped, splattering against the corners of Carmilla’s mouth and down her throat. Lethargy prickled with the pain, 

Would that be enough? Would she be enough? 

In the dark, in the night, cold and afraid, her fear tasted almost sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW THE ENDING SOUNDS AMBIGUOUS BUT I TOO AM A LESBIAN AND CAN TELL YOU NO GAYS DIED TODAY THEY'RE TOTALLY FINE
> 
> This was a result of someone prompting me on tumblr! If you want to prompt your own minific, find me over at writerproblem.tumblr.com
> 
> You're free to translate or podfic this, just tell me so that I can be all excited about it!


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